Amie Siegel will speak about her work 'Dynasty' (2017), at the Yale University symposium 'Object Lessons'.

Convened by Anthony Acciavatti, the event draws together designers, artists and scholars to engage with objects through the senses, a popular pedagogical method of imparting knowledge developed by Swiss education reformer and theorist Johann Pestalozzi in the late 18th century.

Participants in the symposium have devised a lesson from an object that rewards scrutiny and resists simple classification. It might be an everyday object, like a doorknob or carpet; a fantastical imaginary,
like a centaur or makara; or parafictional, like an object with a questionable provenance. By holding an object, weighing it and observing its texture, looking at its components, and perhaps tasting and smelling or listening to it, each speaker will render an entire world of actions and processes that went into its making.

Siegel's 'Dynasty' centers on a fragment of pink marble from the lobby of New York’s Trump Tower. The fragment was purchased by the artist on ebay after the 2016 US presidential election. Siegel placed the fragment in an exhibition vitrine along with two framed photographic prints— scans of “book-matched” marble slabs— quarried to create a mirrored, Rorschach-like effect, a wall text provenance of the marble fragment, and a single evidentiary photograph from the eBay seller. Together the elements raise questions around authenticity and the parallel narratives between material object-hood and desire, psychoanalytic and artistic practices.

Speakers include Adedoyin Teriba, Amie Siegel, Anthony Titus, D. Graham Burnett, Danielle Choi, Gökçe Günel, Kajri Jain, Lan Li, Nicholas de
Monchaux, Rahul Mehrotra, and Sylvia Lavin.

Object Lessons:
10am Friday, 8 April  –
5pm, Saturday 9 April 2022

Yale School of Architecture
180 York Street
New Haven, CT 06511